iped national mentoring program for...
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IPEd National Mentoring Program for editors
Initiated by Canberra Society of Editors
Guidance Notes
These notes apply to all mentorships arranged anywhere in Australia under the national coordination of IPEd , no matter what the location of the mentor or the mentee.
Reviewed November 2016 (amended cover November 2017)
Joint National Mentoring Program Coordinators as at September 2017:
Ted Briggs AE, [email protected]
Elizabeth Manning Murphy DE, [email protected]
Geoff Dawson AE (deputy) [email protected]
General guidelines .......................................................................................................................... 2 Guidelines for mentees ................................................................................................................... 5 Some frequently asked questions for mentees ................................................................................ 8 Guidelines for mentors .................................................................................................................... 9
Some frequently asked questions for mentors .............................................................................. 11
Possible topics for mentoring........................................................................................................ 12
This update (v.14): ratified 31.10.16
Amended (v.14a) cover only to include GD 7.11.17
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General guidelines
Overview The IPEd National Mentoring Program for editors, originally piloted by Canberra
Society of Editors, offers the opportunity for members of any societies or associations
of editors to improve their editing skills with professional oversight and feedback
from experienced editors.
Mentoring is where one individual provides support, encouragement and advice to
another, based on their knowledge and life and experience relative to the mentoring
theme. It provides a two-way learning experience for both mentor and mentee, which
can encourage deep satisfaction and numerous benefits in many personal, career,
organisational and developmental areas.
The Mentoring Program is aimed at editors at all levels, for example:
editors entering the profession
editors preparing for accreditation
people returning to the profession after time off
editors with any level of experience who want to brush up their skills or move into
a new area of editing
editors who have accepted a job which is outside their usual area of expertise.
The program brings benefits to the editing profession by increasing members’ skills,
This, in turn, helps safeguard the reputation of the profession as a whole.
Mentoring,
coaching, and
teaching
In the context of this program, we are talking about one aspect of professional
development, namely mentoring. A mentor is in a two-way mutually beneficial
relationship with a mentee. A mentor aims to help the mentee to develop personally,
provides advice, shares experiences and wisdom, guides the mentee to make his or her
own decisions, but never does work for the mentee. A coach is engaged to provide
strategies and to help the coachee to learn and develop skills for a very specific goal.
A teacher imparts knowledge and skills to a student and sees that the student does the
practice to develop those skills and assesses the results of the teaching at all stages.
In this program, we have used the words mentor and mentee. There may indeed be
some specific goals set by the mentee and there may indeed be a need for the mentor
to teach the mentee some new skills. Mentoring is often long-term, but can be
arranged for short, very specific needs. There are some aspects of teaching, coaching
and counselling in mentoring. However, the relationship is more that of a trusted
friend and driven by the personal needs of the mentee—not imposed on the mentee.
At the end of a mentorship, we ask the mentor to assess the mentee’s progress and make
any necessary recommendations for further mentoring, training, or anything else that may
be of benefit to the mentee. Editing is largely a skills-based activity, so some teaching or
guidance in the development of advanced editing skills and subsequent assessment of
personal development in these skills is inevitable in this mentoring program.
If you would like to read more about mentoring in general, please ask us. You could
start by reading from Elizabeth Manning Murphy’s book, Working words, published
by the Canberra Society of Editors, 2011, Canberra (see page 8).
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Cost A mentorship costs $200, payable by the mentee, comprising administration fee of
$50 and an honorarium for the mentor of $150, for approximately 8 hours of
mentoring, exclusive of travelling time if required. This honorarium is not seen as
‘payment’ but as a token of the commitment the mentee makes to the mentorship.
Mentoring is seen as a way of giving something back to the profession. The fee
applies to ‘a mentorship’ no matter how long or short it is; a mentorship of 2 hours
may well be just as valuable as one of 8 hours.
Any travelling to meet each other is at the discretion of the mentor and mentee, and
costs involved do not enter into the mentorship costing. If distance is a real problem,
the partners should consider using Skype for personal contact.
How it works Experienced editors who are members of their local editing association or society or
branch of IPEd act as mentors in one of three ways:
1. They will provide a mentee with a copy of a longish document for them to copy-
edit and a shorter document for proofreading. The documents are preferably real
examples that the mentor has previously worked on. The mentor reviews the
mentee’s work and provides feedback and advice.
2. They will provide informal ad hoc advice, support, encouragement without it
being based on a specific document, or on any document—perhaps advice on the
business aspects of freelance editing.
3. They will provide a combination of the types of support described in points 1 and
2; for example, general advice and encouragement combined with shorter
documents to work on. Documents may also be provided by the mentee; in this
case, the mentee should obtain any necessary permissions to use a document in
this way, and guarantee confidentiality.
Under the program, certain rules and conditions apply to mentors and mentees, while
others govern the mentoring relationship. These are set out in broad terms on the
following pages.
The structure of the program looks like this:
National Coordinators |
Local (State, Territory, Branch) Coordinators |
Mentors and Mentees
For now, the central administrative role continues to be undertaken by the existing
joint national coordinators (who happen to be located in Canberra) liaising with local
coordinators. The role of local coordinators is: to form mentoring partnerships (sometimes with help from the national database or
support from the national coordinators), including informing participants of
payment procedures
to get feedback during and at the end of mentorships
to report to the national coordinators
to report regularly to their respective IPEd branch committees or editing societies.
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Length of
mentorship
The mentorship covers approximately 8 hours of contribution by the mentor. It is
recommended that this be spread out over several months (perhaps 3 months). If a
mentee’s goals are achieved in 1 or 2 hours, the mentorship can certainly be
concluded at that point, but more than 8 hours will require re-thinking between
mentor and mentee, and may require re-negotiation if much longer is deemed
necessary. The actual length of any mentorship is difficult to predict until it is under
way, but local and national coordinators are there to help, and flexibility is key in our
program.
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Guidelines for mentees
Eligibility You must be a financial member of IPEd or another society or association of editors
at any level of membership. (In some cases, this means full/professional, associate or
student. Other organisations may have other hierarchies of membership—all are
acceptable.)
Prior training Before becoming a mentee, you must have had some exposure to editing—the
program is not designed to teach you the basics of editing. You are normally expected
to have done some work (either voluntary or paid) and have completed at least one
training course or workshop that has covered the basics of copy-editing and
proofreading. This training may be attendance in person or online at a workshop with
your own society or another, on-the-job training in an in-house position, or any other
means of learning the basics of copy-editing and proofreading, including private
study. We recognise that facilities for training are not always readily available—
please contact the national coordinators for further advice on training that might be
available and suitable. Mentees needing to undertake training in basic copy-editing
and proofreading skills should contact their local training officers, or consult local
mentoring coordinators who will advise. A mentorship cannot start unless the mentee
has received this basic training and acquired at least some experience.
Application form To get a form, email your local coordinator via your IPEd branch website, or email
one of the joint national coordinators:
Ted Briggs AE, [email protected]
Elizabeth Manning Murphy DE, [email protected]
When you have completed the form, send it to [email protected] as well
as to the local coordinator named on the form or on a covering email. You will be
asked to list your specific goals, experience and training, to help the local coordinator
make a suitable match with a mentor.
Payment You will not be required to pay the fee ($200) until a mentor has been appointed, and
you have had one ‘getting to know you’ brief session with your appointed mentor. The
local or national coordinator will send you instructions for paying once a mentor has
been appointed. Funds will be paid direct into the IPEd bank account (you will receive
the IPEd bank details).
Assigning a mentor Your local coordinator will contact you as soon as a suitable mentor is available who
has a working knowledge of your subject specialisation request. As mentors are
editing professionals in their own right, it should be understood that it may take time
for a mentor to become available.
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Communicating
with your mentor
Upon receiving your mentor’s contact details, make contact with him or her as soon
as possible to set up an initial meeting to negotiate the process for your mentorship.
As noted above, you do not pay the fee until after this first meeting.
Although face-to-face sessions are the most effective means of knowledge and skills
transfer, they are not necessarily the most efficient, so mentoring may comprise a
combination of emailing of MS Word documents showing changes tracked, telephone
or Skype conversations and, where necessary, face-to-face sessions. You will be
responsible for printing out texts from the electronic documents supplied to you.
Confidentiality By signing the application form to be a mentee you are agreeing to treat any text you will
be working on as confidential, as well as any aspect of the relationship between you and
your mentor.
Mentor’s role Mentors are working people and often have several projects on the go. Allow for this
if mentors cannot always get back to you in good time. Your mentor is your guide and
adviser, but not your teacher. Your mentor will give you feedback on practice
copyediting and other tasks you agree to undertake, but will not do work for you or
train you in basic copy-editing and proofreading. Your mentor will listen and help
you to work out a pathway to achieving your editing goals—as the mentee, you drive
the mentorship.
Honouring
deadlines
You will agree on a deadline for any work to be submitted to your mentor. Please
treat your mentor as if they were a friendly client—be considerate, and return the job
on time.
Extended
mentoring
If you feel you need more than the agreed time allocated to your mentorship, you
should consult with your mentor about extra time and any additional fee. Your local
coordinator must approve any changes and inform the national coordinators.
If the relationship
is not working
If a relationship does not work out, you or your mentor should contact your local
coordinator to discuss a possible re-matching.
Evaluation At the end of the mentoring project your mentor will issue you with a detailed
evaluation of your performance, highlighting your strengths and weaknesses and
indicating possible areas for further development.
Continuing
training
If you wish, you and your mentor can make private arrangements to enter into a
training or coaching relationship at the end of the mentoring project.
Feedback forms Your local coordinator will ask you and your mentor to submit written feedback on the
mentorship and the mentoring program at the end of the mentorship. Likewise, your
mentor will be asked to evaluate your progress in a document addressed primarily to
you (see Evaluation above), but copied also to the local and national coordinators.
Responses, in both cases, will be kept confidential to those concerned and the
coordinators, and will only be used anonymously to assess and improve the
effectiveness of the program.
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Paid work
Further study
Completing a mentorship is not a guarantee of receiving paid assignments. Your
marketing skills and, eventually, reputation will determine how successful you will be
in contracting for work.
We recommend continuing with workshops, mentorship programs, private study or
courses as far as possible as part of your professional development.
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Some frequently asked questions for mentees
Do I have to be a
member of IPEd
or another editors’
association?
Yes.
Do I have to be a
full member?
No.
Why do I have to
pay a fee?
Research in similar organisations, including the Society for Editors and Proofreaders
SfEP (UK), Editors Association of Canada (EAC) and Professional Editors’ Guild
(South Africa) has shown that charging a small fee is more likely to produce a
commitment to the mentoring on the part of the mentee.
Can I use a real
job as the basis of
my mentorship?
It depends on the nature of your mentorship program.
One thing to be aware of with using a real job is that you may be subject to deadlines
or security strictures that make it impractical to get the most out of your mentor. It is
preferable to treat your mentorship as a professional development exercise. Also it is
possible that, where appropriate, your mentor will select a text for you to work on that
covers a wider range of issues than a real job.
As a student or
associate member,
will I be eligible
for full
membership after
being a mentee?
You will still have to show that you satisfy the requirements for full membership.
Mentorship is not considered a stepping stone to advancement in membership status in
our program.
I live outside an
Australian capital
city. Can I have a
mentor?
We don’t see distance as a problem if you can use Skype, a phone and email—and if
you’re comfortable receiving guidance through Track Changes comment notes. Some
face-to-face contact is desirable in such a partnership, so either at least one personal
visit or the use of Skype would cover that.
Will being a
mentee count
towards
accreditation?
Not directly—you will still have to pass the IPEd accreditation exam to become
accredited. However, being a mentee could be part of your preparation for the exam.
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Guidelines for mentors
Who can be a
mentor?
Mentors’
workshops
The program needs editors who are members of IPEd or another editing association,
at any level of membership, prepared to share their knowledge and skills, to become
mentors to other members. Mentors do not have to be AEs or DEs—just members
who feel passionate about helping other editors achieve their full potential. You can
be a member of any recognised editing association, preferably but not necessarily
IPEd, Australia. Mentors who are members of non-Australian editing associations are
allocated to an appropriate Australian local coordinator, depending on personal
choice, as far as practicable.
Mentoring means different things to different people. Our program is based on the
classic meaning of ‘mentor’, so mentors and prospective mentors are asked to attend
at least one Mentors’ Workshop before beginning their first matching with a mentee,
or as soon as possible after the start of that matching. The workshop is free and
workshops are arranged in Canberra and all state capitals of Australia as required.
Attendance in person is ideal, but attendance by Skype can often be arranged. The
workshop lasts for approximately two hours, including refreshments for those
attending in person. It is designed to clarify the difference between mentoring and
other forms of professional development. It helps to build communication strategies
for guiding and encouraging mentees so that they are helped to achieve their goals. It
includes open discussion of aspects of mentoring, and a variety of illustrative case
studies.
How to register
To register as a mentor, you will need to complete a registration form on which you
provide details of your work experience, training and qualifications.
To get a form, email your local coordinator via your IPEd branch website, or email
one of the joint national coordinators:
Ted Briggs AE, [email protected]
Elizabeth Manning Murphy DE, [email protected]
You will be asked to list your specific skills, experience and training, to help the local
coordinator make a suitable match with a mentee. You will also be asked to say what
areas of editing expertise you are prepared to mentor in and what areas you don’t wish
to mentor in.
When you have completed the form, send it to [email protected] as well as
to the local coordinator named on the form or on a covering email.
Honorarium
The IPEd Financial Officer will email you to tell you how to claim your honorarium.
Register of
mentors
Once you have registered, your name will go on a database of mentors from which
recommendations will be submitted to potential mentees.
You will be listed as an ‘active’ mentor unless you ask to have a break from
mentoring—in that event, you will then be listed as ‘inactive’. You may ask to be
removed entirely from the database at any time.
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Availability You may determine your availability according to your circumstances. Contact your
local coordinator to have database records altered.
Selecting texts for
mentoring
Since one of the key ways in which mentees can have their knowledge and skills
assessed is by working on a document you have already edited, you should retain a
selection of manuscripts you have worked on as model exercises, as well as unedited
originals for mentees to work on. You should provide a detailed brief and indicate
whether an existing style sheet and the Track Changes function should be used.
Note that you should get permission from your original client to use the text in this
way. Please remind mentees to treat the text they will be working on as confidential.
Not every mentoring project will involve working on a document—some mentorships
may be more about general advice, encouragement and support, or about making the
move to freelancing. Some mentorships may involve working on a document provided
by the mentee; in this case, the mentee should obtain any necessary permissions to use
the document in this way, and guarantee confidentiality.
Evaluation
At the end of a mentoring project, you are required to issue your mentee with a
detailed evaluation of their performance, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses,
and indicating possible areas for further development.
The mentee is free to discuss this evaluation with the local coordinator who may also
discuss it with the national coordinators—in confidence.
Further
development
Having assessed your mentees, you may recommend that mentees undertake further
supervised work, based on an objective assessment that mentees are not ready to take
on professional work independently. The further project may be supervised by you or
by a new mentor.
From mentorship
to training
If you wish, you and your mentee can make private arrangements to enter into a
training or coaching relationship at the end of the mentoring project.
Feedback forms Your local coordinator will issue both you and your mentee with a feedback form at
the end of your mentorships. Responses will be kept confidential and will only be
used anonymously to assess and improve the effectiveness of the program.
Are there any
limits to what the
mentor and
mentee can
discuss?
No. Often the mentee just wants encouragement, so a prime qualification for being a
mentor would be the ability to listen.
If the relationship
is not working
If a relationship does not work out, you or your mentee should contact the local
coordinator to discuss a possible re-matching.
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Some frequently asked questions for mentors
Do I have to be a
senior member to
be a mentor?
Not necessarily. You do have to be a member, at any level, of IPEd or of another
association of editors, and the better your qualifications and experience, the more you
will probably be able to give to the program and your mentees. Most mentors will
probably be more experienced than their mentees, but younger and newer members may
have skills they are willing to share in areas that older members may not have, such as
relevant computer technology.
Can I mentor
more than one
mentee at the
same time?
Yes, if you can keep them apart in your mind. In fact, in certain circumstances, it may
be feasible to arrange for mentees with a mutual interest to share mentoring sessions.
This must be subject to the program’s confidentiality guidelines. In some programs
where such an arrangement has occurred, the mentees concerned sometimes glean a lot
from each other as well as from the mentor. Occasional short meetings of two or more
mentees with their mentor can provide useful cross-fertilisation of ideas all round if
controlled carefully.
I don’t live in an
Australian city.
Can I be a
mentor?
We don’t see distance as a problem if you can use Skype, a phone and email—and if
you’re comfortable giving guidance through Track Changes comment notes. Some face-
to-face contact is desirable in such a partnership, so either at least one personal visit or
the use of Skype would cover that.
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Possible topics for mentoring
The national coordinators have been asked what topics can be covered in a mentoring program. As indicated
earlier in these guidance notes, no topic is out of bounds—it is a matter for agreement between the mentee and
the mentor. The local coordinator needs to know from the mentee what topic he or she wishes to be mentored
in, and a suitable and willing mentor will then be sought. However, below is a list of topics that have been
covered in our pilot program and suggested in discussions. It is not exhaustive, and mentees are free to seek
mentoring in any area of practical editing or related topics.
Advancing copy-editing skills using Track Changes
Reviewing proofreading skills using manually inserted standard proofreading marks
Substantive editing
Specific fiction or non-fiction editing
Specialist editing, for example: academic (theses and journal articles), scientific, legal, music, non-native
English, children’s literature, material for websites
Guidance in aspects of English grammar
Developing an entry for an editing association’s freelance register
Aspects of running a freelance editing business: reference library; office equipment; documentation—
quoting for jobs, invoicing; client relations; ethical considerations; insurance including professional
indemnity
Returning to editing after a long break
Guidance in editing in an area new to you
Guidance in preparation for an upcoming accreditation examination
Referencing and citation styles in various environments; use of EndNote™ and other aids
Guidance in responses to publishing houses’ questionnaires and other documentation
Using other editing aids such as PerfectIt™.